


the product of nightmares

by serenfire



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil has an important tattoo, Cecil's brother is evil and a ghost, Dana has worked at NVCR for a long time, bloodstones are important, dark!Cecil, possessed!Cecil, younger!Cecil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenfire/pseuds/serenfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Cecil's first day as Night Vale Community Radio show host, his dead brother haunted his dreams, threatening further violence to him and the missing Leonard Burton. Cecil only hopes the bloodstone sigil tattoo he got would protect him from harm; except that's not what it does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the product of nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> @anyone I know irl: do not read thanks

Cecil grinned to himself, and adjusted his sweatshirt over his arms and hands. He stared at the front of the Night Vale Community Radio building and eyed the door, fidgeting from nervous energy.

 _I should have gone for a run this morning,_ he told himself. Burn off the nervousness and fear from last night. He enjoyed a nice jog around Radon Canyon once in a while, but not _too_ often as to pick up any more radiation poisoning than was necessary for his health.

However, Cecil hadn’t, and would be—he checked his sluggish watch, his stomach tangling itself up in wires—seven minutes late. On his _first day_ as Community Radio show host.

Dana would _kill_ him—affectionately, though, with a cuff behind his ears like Cecil was a cute pet, and an instruction to _get to his desk_ _immediately_.

But no, Cecil corrected himself, staring at the glossy black door that lead into the Radio building and attempting to coax a reflection out of it; it’s _Intern Dana_ now, and Cecil wasn’t Intern Cecil anymore. Cecil was the host of the show.

He couldn’t sleep last night. His nerves had played him like a broken guitar all night, as he had sat up, vigilantly unblinking, staring at the ghost of his brother which threatened to overwhelm him with his whisperings of death and despair.

_You’ll never be able to do this, Cecil._

_Just wait until you mess up_ onair _—this time when people are actually bothering to listen to_ you _because they don’t know what happened to Leonard yet._

 _They don’t know what_ you _did to Leonard._

Cecil swallowed, fighting back nausea and placing the palm of his left hand over the back of his right—over his protective tattoo. He blinked at the unyielding door, near enough to it to reach out and _touch_ it had he wanted to—and drew back his interconnected hands from their outstretched position, looking down at the visual representation of the searing pain he had gone through to ensure he remained safe from physical harm the ghosts would cause him.

Safe from his brother.

Safe from _Leonard_.

Cecil clamped his palm over the tattoo, again, not ready to let the fresh ink see the light of day yet. He shimmied the sleeves of his sweatshirt further over his hands.

He had to enter the building. _He had to enter the building or the Secret Police would show up at his house to see why he wasn’t at work._

They couldn’t do that, they _couldn’t_ do that. Cecil’s brother would do the terrible things he promised to do to frame Cecil for—for what happened to Leonard.

Cecil reached out a hand intertwined with the other and pushed the door open. It opened inward, as if beckoning Cecil in, or dragging him in with a rope. The lights were off, and the sunlight illuminated a cup of coffee lying on its side on the floor, the coffee sinking into the shag carpet.

 _It’s a bad idea to go in there,_ Cecil told himself. But it was the first day of his new position, and if he didn’t—if he disappeared—the Sheriff’s Secret Police would come looking for him, and they would _find things_.

Cecil didn’t know what had happened to Leonard, he _swore_ to anyone listening into his thoughts, but his brother did.

He clenched the permanent purple on the back of his hand even tighter and stepped through the doorway, fumbling with the lights with interconnected hands.

The lights slowly flickered on, one fluorescent strip at a time, down the hallways and splitting off at the end of the main corridor.

No one was in the Radio station.

“Dana?” Cecil voiced, shoving his hands in his jean pockets as wind flew at him from behind the door at the end of the hallway.

He slammed the front door shut behind him as the wind threatened to throw him out of the building.

“Dana!” Cecil panicked. She always set up the Radio station for the day, every day for as long as Cecil had been interning on the show. Dana always turned on the lights, started the automatic coffee maker and prepared the bloodstone circle.

 _I shouldn’t have been ten minutes late,_ Cecil berated himself. What if Station Management had decided ze needed a snack because ze wasn’t being fed radio quickly enough, and had chosen the only one in hir close proximity to eat?

 _Station Management probably doesn’t operate like that,_ Cecil told himself. _Don’t believe everything Intern Mark says._

The wind flew at him again, whipping his hair out behind him, and Cecil buried his hands further in his pockets. It was coming from the room at the end of the hallway; _his_ room.

No one takes Cecil’s room.

Cecil ran down the hallway and threw himself at his door, twisting the knob and, feeling the resistance of a locked door, panicked and began to hammer on the doorway. “Dana!” he screamed, clawing at the smooth metal, unyielding under his fingernails. “Dana, please tell me you’re alright. Dana, please. You can’t die now— _please! Answer me. Dana! You’ll be okay_.” He slid down the length of the door, landing with his knees on the shag carpet, squishing in coffee, and leaned his forehead on the cool surface of the door.

“Dana,” he whispered. “It’ll be okay. It’s only my brother; he’s only a ghost. He can’t hurt you if you don’t let him.”

 _That’s only if I feel like following the rules,_ a voice curled into his ear, silky and reminiscent of Cecil’s younger days, spent in closets and locked in bathrooms, underneath windows, _hiding_ from that voice. _Do you think I feel like following the rules today?_ No, he didn’t.

Cecil had _known_ that following his dream, to be like Leonard Burton, would end in disaster if his brother had anything to say about it. He knew that once he started interning at the Community Radio, his brother would hate him more for living, and for getting a chance to live _well_.

But the promotion of all promotions—Leonard Burton’s place, when Leonard went missing—his brother had to be behind it. Cecil choked on his own breath, curling up into a ball at the foot of his own door, slamming his fists into it and screaming.

His nervous energy from five minutes ago was gone, replaced by terror.

All Cecil had ever wanted was to _succeed_ at something. All he wanted to do was talk to people, tell people things, see their faces when they lit up at his words— _his words_.

His brother had to die and haunt him for not dying along with him— _You were the one that was supposed to die that day,_ his brother would growl at him, crunching his heart in his ghostly fingers—but Cecil wouldn’t take it any more.

Especially when his brother had kidnapped or killed Leonard Burton just to kill Cecil.

Was this his brother’s plan?

“Why must you hate me so?” Cecil hissed fiercely, eyes staring resolutely on the ground, hunched over himself. He wasn’t even going to college for another year. It wasn’t his time to die.

There were no mirrors in sight.

 _Why must you live?_ The answer curled back at him in a hiss of purple light. _Why must the world not be fair?_

“I don’t know,” Cecil choked. “Please. Just _please_. Don’t do anything with Dana. She’s—she’s _vital_ to this radio show, she’s vital to this town. Please, brother. Leave her alone.”

_Make me._

So it was a challenge, then? Cecil’s doorknob had been supernaturally locked, but it was a challenge to overcome his brother, to actively fight so his brother could not have to break the law outright to murder Cecil.

Cecil should leave. He should barricade himself inside his house with his foil cap on and water gun, locking the doors and drawing an ash circle around his property—he should shoot at visitors first and ask questions later. He should protect himself instead of his friends, like all children were taught in elementary school.

But _Dana._

Cecil couldn’t live if his brother had killed Dana—if he saw in the news that her throat had been ripped out or her skull slit open, or any other way of killing that Cecil’s brother had done before. He had to—Cecil had to _do_ something.

Cecil raised his head and curled his fist around the shag carpet, around the coffee stains from the automatic coffee maker left on too long unattended.

He closed his eyes. He breathed.

He blinked.

Cecil didn’t register that he was seeing in shades of darkness until he had punched through his solid metal door, ripping it off its hinges and growling at what the unnatural light in the room had revealed to him.

Dana lay, gagged and bound, struggling fiercely, on Cecil’s desk, all radio equipment having been swept from it and his brother, in an ethereal form, standing over her, holding her mug of coffee and still in the motion of watching the door, an eyebrow raised, when Cecil threw himself at his brother in an unholy rage.

He sunk his fingers— _claws_ —into his brother’s chest, even though his brother wasn’t in a corporeal form and couldn’t be touched by human hands unless he wished it so.

Cecil threw his brother across the room, and he hit the glass window, crumpling to the floor. Cecil was on him in a moment, hands around his neck and choking him. Cecil could feel an unnatural scowl stretching across his face as he watched his brother’s form flicker, shaking and trying to move, but being trapped by Cecil.

“You’re my brother,” Cecil hissed, “but Dana’s more blood than you are. You’re dead, because you tried to _kill me and failed_. Accept your fate. You’re going to die again, and I’m going to watch you again, and I’m not going to cry this time. I’m not going to _pity_ you, because you’re a monster and don’t have a soul. I’m going to kill you, and there’s no way you can come back to life again.”

His brother watched him as he spat, and Cecil took his hand with the burning, glistening, _glowing_ tattoo and shoved it through his brother’s face, shattering his skull and growling until his brother oozed enough ectoplasm and just lay, a cadaver, pale and dead.

Dana pried Cecil off his brother’s dead body.

Dana fetched Cecil a rag to wipe the drying blood from his hands.

Dana cleaned Cecil off.

Dana calmed Cecil down.

Cecil whispered, eyes still blown wide from the shock, “How did I—how did I—”

Dana just said, looking away from his face, “It was the bloodstone.”

Cecil touched the red welts on her neck from where the rope had bound her until the moment of his brother’s death, when it had faded. “What was the bloodstone?”

“ _You_ were the bloodstone, Cecil.”

Cecil looked up, mouth slack. “I—”

“I saw it in your eyes, on your _hand_.” Dana pulled his sweatshirt up over his hand, pointing at the purple eye Cecil had embedded under his skin. “Next time you get a bloodstone protection sigil tattooed under your skin, register it _before_ coming to work so you don’t just— _explode.”_

“I saved your life because of _this_ ,” Cecil touched the back of his hand; touched the still-burning tattoo. “I— _Dana, you could have died_.”

Dana cradled him, head buried in her shoulder, until Cecil had relaxed enough for her to pull away and Cecil to not start spontaneously shaking. “You saved me, Cecil, but you can probably feel it, deep down _there_.” She touched the place where his heart lie, quivering, exhausted. “Your soul is forming scars to cover the possession and infuse of magic, and you’re going to feel it for the rest of your life.”

“How do you know that?” Cecil whispered.

“I saw your eyes,” Dana said again, grimacing at Cecil’s shell-shocked face. “They were glowing white.”

Cecil looked back down at his hands; back down at the tattoo that had saved both their lives. Ink ran out from it up into his arm, and Cecil frowned, tugging the sleeved up to see where it led.

Purple lines twisted around his forearm, curling around each other in tentacles and branching off in roots.

“What’s it doing?” Cecil said slowly, not unappreciative of how the bloodstone tattoo was marking him.

 “It’s becoming part of you,” Dana said, standing up and offering him a hand. He took it, yanking his sleeve back down as he stood up. “Which is not entirely a bad thing—you’ll feel different, Cecil. The hooded figures will take more of an interest in you. Erika will notice you, _though she doesn’t exist_. Things will change, and I’m _sorry_ , and also thankful, for you saving my life. But we have a radio station to clean up now.”

Cecil looked around his room. It lay in shambles, frozen in the time when his brother had held Dana on his desk and threatened to _kill_ her, just to abuse his brother from the grave, one last time.

Cecil clenched his fist and looked at the body of his brother for one last time, and didn’t feel any pity for him. He cracked a gruesome smile as he raised his fingers, shaking, and snapped.

The body burst into white flames, and was consumed. Ash sprinkled the room.

“It’s done,” Cecil breathed, turning to look at Dana.

All Dana did was frown at him with her eyes, and tap on his heart, as if trying to tell him to _feel_ what was happening to himself.

Oh, did Cecil feel what was happening to himself.

He felt his soul sickeningly clench and shift itself around, rearrange itself and breathe in new life with the bloodstone. He felt his soul being tainted by the purple shroud of death and rage and _hate_ and loss of control he never wanted to experience again, but would experience every second of his waking existence.

Dana was worth it, he said to himself, watching her face as she pressed her knuckles to her throat and grimaced. She was strong, she would get over the attempted murder, she would survive better than Cecil ever could.

Dana’s life was worth more than Cecil’s was, by far.

Cecil swallowed and shoved his hands into his jeans. He felt the bloodstone possession press into the back of his head, like it was touching him for a split second to evaluate how he felt before retracting itself, secluding itself in whatever magic pocket it lived in.

 _I’ll see you later,_ he thought.

He would see it later. Cecil’s brother may leave his nightmares at some point, but the darkness that now sheltered inside of him never would.


End file.
